Understand my skin

Sensitive Skin and Premature Ageing: Understanding the Link and How to Prevent It

Skin sensitivity can be aggravated by external factors like pollution, UV rays, sudden temperature change or unsuitable cosmetics. When skin is constantly sensitised by external stressors, this generates more oxidative stress, alters the skin barrier and leads to chronic inflammation.

What Is Sensitive Skin?

Sensitive skin is a common condition characterized by heightened reactions to environmental, topical, or internal triggers. It's often linked to sensations such as itching, burning, redness or tightness even when no visible signs are present.

Interestingly, the symptoms of sensitive skin and premature skin ageing are closely connected. They often share the same three underlying causes:

Oxidative stress
Skin barrier disruption
Chronic inflammation

To fully understand this connection, it’s important to first differentiate between sensitive skin and sensitized skin, two terms that are often confused but describe different skin responses.

The causes and consequences of sensitive skin

60% to 70% of women suffer from sensitive skin, and 50% to 60% of men¹. This occurs when nerve fibres quickly become hyperexcited when exposed to certain triggers. The skin overreacts. These cutaneous changes may result in unpleasant feelings, including stinging, tightness, heating, itching and irritation. Visible symptoms include the appearance of temporary redness.

This sensitivity can also be created or aggravated by external environmental and lifestyle factors, such as pollution, UV rays, stress, hot and cold and unsuitable cosmetics. When exposed to these irritants, the skin produces too many free radicals. This increases oxidative stress and alters the skin’s protective barrier function, leading to inflammation and sensitised skin. This “induced” sensitivity can increase natural sensitivity.

Some inflammation is necessary and healthy to help fight off germs and facilitate healing. However, excessive or chronic inflammation heightens skin sensitivity and further decreases the skin’s defences.

¹Farage, MA. The prevalence of sensitive skin. Front Med 2019; 6:98.

The Link Between Premature Ageing and Sensitive Skin

Sensitive skin and premature aging are closely linked due to oxidative stress, barrier dysfunction, and chronic inflammation, all of which contribute to accelerated skin aging. These factors not only weaken the skin’s defences but also trigger a phenomenon known as inflamm'ageing, which is a key driver of premature skin aging.

Coined in the early 2000s by immunology professor Claudio Franceschi at the University of Bologna, inflamm’ageing refers to the chronic inflammation that leads the cells of the epidermis and the dermis to age prematurely. The visible effects of inflamm’ageing – including wrinkles and fine lines, dehydration and a dull complexion – appear on the skin quicker than during the natural ageing process and continue to accelerate as the skin’s defensive capabilities decrease.

Dr Miroslav Radman , Biologist and geneticist .

Specialising in inflamm’ageing, biologist and geneticist Dr Miroslav Radman highlights the link between chronic inflammation and accelerated cell senescence:
Chronic inflammation, at the origin of inflamm’ageing, is also called ‘sterile inflammation’ because there are no bacteria or viruses at the inflammation site. The chronic inflammation breaks down cell-to-cell connections, separating cells and leading to the breakdown of tissue homeostasis maintained by cellular parabiosis (the ability to ‘live together’).

Dr Miroslav Radman , Biologist and geneticist .

Effective action to slow down the premature ageing of sensitive skin therefore needs to act on both the causes and consequences of this sensitivity. Breaking the vicious cycle of inflammation, oxidative stress, and skin barrier damage, heighten by external factors, can reduce skin sensitivity and slow inflamm’ageing.

Through advanced research, Bioderma has developed a Defensive Technology that delivers a triple action. It provides antioxidant protection, strengthens the skin’s natural barrier and reduces inflammation. This ecobiological approach is the inspiration behind Bioderma’s latest innovation that cares for sensitive and sensitised skin, acting against premature ageing.